Violet writes:

…the results of a study about sexual motivations started to hit the wires; the psychologists thankfully eschewed the typical “biological imperative” argument and really dug into people’s reasons for fucking. I have no idea how diverse their definitions of sex were, nor if they only sampled heterosexuals, but it was interesting nonetheless — and deserving of more comment. Justin Park at Men’s Health felt the same way, and came up with a nice response to the study (and media surrounding it) in Why Do You Have Sex? He interviewed me for the piece, and with his permission I’ve included the entire, original email interview after the jump.

In her exchange with Justin, she notes the role of the web in challenging myths that (still!) llinger about female sexuality:

…in my experience as an educator, forum moderator,
writer and researcher, women are on pretty equal ground when it comes
to physical sexual desire, and men by and large seem to seek sex for
emotional reasons just as much as women do. Men love to please their
partners and love to be loved, and sex is part of that for many men.

I think a lot of the assumptions about women’s sexuality — physical
desire and satisfaction, specifically — come from ignorance about
anatomy and female sexual function. Guys do it because everyone knows
it feels good for *them*, right? Girls do it because they have to, or
so it goes until we learn about sexual pleasure in female anatomy and
not just reproduction. But not so much anymore for us women; just see
what’s happening online with women discovering their sexuality — and
catching up to men in terms of porn consumption, which until the
Internet, was largely inaccessible to us as a gender. Let’s see if
media punditry will catch up with the rest of us in the next decade.

The whole post is here.